


Hobbies

by stuffed_grape_leaves



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Vague depictions of violence, crowley loves kids but he has baggage(tm)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 14:36:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19929679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stuffed_grape_leaves/pseuds/stuffed_grape_leaves
Summary: Azirphale wants Crowley to get a hobby, but Crowley is hesitant to do anything that involves interacting with humans, especially kids.





	Hobbies

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first fic ever, i have no idea how to tag it or what i'm doing really, i just had this idea and wanted to share it.

Ever since the Not-Apocalypse, Crowley hadn’t known what to do with himself. Though he still did quite like inconveniencing humans and ruffling Aziraphale’s feathers, it wasn’t really the same, what with not having an Ineffable Plan to thwart. That and Hell wasn’t talking to him, so he couldn’t even bother other demons with his preference for low-grade evil over outright cruelty.

“You need a hobby, my dear boy,” Aziraphale said to him one day over dinner. They had gone to the angel’s favorite sushi restaurant. “Something to keep you busy, but not bored. My books, for instance, keep me very busy. That and sushi,” he tacked on, beaming at his dish.

“I know what a hobby is. And no offense, Angel, but that’s about the worst hobby I can think of.” It wasn’t that Crowley hated stories, or even reading and writing. To the contrary, he thought them excellent inventions, one of the best that humans had come up with, especially since it was so easy to build minor annoyances into them (he had, after all, come up with autocorrect).

He was just too… restless to enjoy books the way that Aziraphale did. Aziraphale could sit at his desk all day with one book and be content. Crowley wasn’t made that way. Whether or not the Fall had anything to do with that, he wasn’t sure—it was so distant a memory that Crowley couldn’t recall exactly how he’d been before.

“Besides,” he added to the bottom of his wine glass, “I have a hobby.”

“Yelling at your plants isn’t a hobby,” Aziraphale responded. Crowley hissed back.

They sat in silence for a few moments, Crowley glowering over his glass, Aziraphale completely enthralled in his meal.

“Well, what about kids?” Aziraphale offered.

“Kids? What about them?”

“You’ve always loved children.”

“Hey,” Crowley cut him off, pointing his wine glass at Aziraphale. “I’m a demon, I don’t love. And even if I did, I especially don’t love kids.”

“You know that I don’t believe that, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, playfully scolding him. “Regardless, you’ve always been fond of children. Warlock liked you. Adam and his friends took to you quickly. Oh! And Cain and Abel were quite fond of you.”

“I- I wouldn’t use that as evidence of… anything positive.”

_It was the summer harvest. Crawley had spent the better part of the season tempting the only two young men in the world to abandon their responsibilities and join him. The beautiful infant world was theirs for the taking, if they would walk away. Strong as his offers were, Cain and Abel’s duty to their family was stronger still, and they remained. Together, the brothers were unbreakable. One unit, meant to care for the earth, honor their parents, and praise the Almighty._

_But Eden hadn’t been brought down by two people, Crawley remembered. It had only taken one to cause some trouble. Perhaps the apple didn’t fall far from the tree…_

_A large black snake slithered across the wheat fields, searching for the elder son of Adam. He found him, at the altar to the Almighty, laying his offering down next to his brother’s. Crawley, too far away, could not hear what had happened—or perhaps, the Almighty had prevented him from hearing—but Cain snatched his harvest’s offering from the altar and turned to go. Abel tried to grab him, to keep him, but Crawley could smell the rage, the rejection, on Cain, and as Abel touched his brother, Crawley felt Hell break loose._

_Crawley darted towards the brothers, prodding the hurt in Cain, feeding off Cain’s rage as much as he fed it. The thrill was irresistible. Yes, Cain, the Almighty rejected you, chose Abel instead. You are the first born, it is your right to take precedent. Why should the Almighty decide what is better, more acceptable? They didn’t see the full story, how you toiled in the sun, while Abel lazed about in the fields with his goats. Just because you weren’t as good doesn’t make you bad. The Almighty doesn’t care, and that’s not fair. _

_The serpent projected these thoughts into Cain’s soul, and as the anger rose in Cain, Crawley lost control over the elder brother. Cain might have blindly reached out and found a stone that had fallen from the altar, but his swing back to Abel was steady, purposeful. A dull crunch followed._

_Cain lurched off Abel, panting wildly, confused but somehow cognizant. Crawley knew that look—that was the look of a Fallen. How did it come to this? the expression asked. Where do I go from here? Will I be forgiven?_

_Standing before him, over the world’s inaugural corpse, Crowley saw a reflection of who he might become, if he opened that floodgate again._

The memory of Cain and Abel still stung, as if Crowley had just read the obituary that morning. Back then, Crowley hadn’t known enough about humans to predict how the story would end. He had only meant to sow the seeds of distrust, maybe a lifelong grudge. He never thought that… they were only _boys_ , for someone’s sake.

That’s what he told himself, anyways. If Crowley was completely honest—which he wasn’t sure he could be—he hadn’t known what his endgame was. He hadn’t been sent to Earth that summer; he was exploring, playing hooky from Hell. Over the millennia, the only logical conclusion he could come to was the one he couldn’t bear.

Since that day, the day of the first murder, Crowley hadn’t whispered in anyone’s ears, hadn’t cast ideas into peoples’ heads. Sure, he lied, he bribed, he even tapped into that stupid human need to appear more important that one was—that was safe. But he never again let himself into a human’s head. He learned that humans were capable of being terrible to each other all own their own, without any help from Below, and often despite help from Above.

“Crowley—Crowley are you listening to me?” Aziraphale laid a hand on his knee and shook him a little bit. “You look like you’ve wandered off.”

“What? Yeah, no, um, check please!” Crowley flagged down the waitress and handed her a card, not waiting for the little leather booklet. They waited in silence for her to return. He fiddled nervously with a ring until she came back, then all but bolted out of the restaurant.

Aziraphale gathered his coat and satchel very deliberately, planning their walk home. Something had woken up in Crowley, and though Aziraphale wasn’t at all sure what it might be, he knew the task of getting his demon to open up would be monumental. He must tread carefully. He pulled a small notepad out of the satchel and followed Crowley, who he knew had not actually left.

“I was saying that you should find a way to spend time with children,” Aziraphale said to Crowley as he rounded the corner outside the restaurant, where he knew his demon would be. They walked down the sidewalk, back towards the bookshop. “I think it would do you a world of g—of… not bad.” Aziraphale full heartedly believed that Crowley’s aversion to positive words was only because he still hadn’t adjusted to the post-Not Apocalyptic world. Hell didn’t bother him anymore, and if he wanted to be good, he was fully allowed. And anyways, having to go out of his way to say what he wanted was rather inconvenient.

“Aziraphale, even if I _were_ to go along with this plan, which by the way, the concept of children is not a hobby, how would I go about gaining access to them without looking like a weird, creepy, old man?”

“Is that what you’re worried about?” the angel asked, knowing full well it was not what Crowley worried about.

They stopped under a streetlight, just a few blocks from the bookshop.

“Angel, I never told you this,” Crowley began, pulling each word out of his mouth. “I—I was there, when Cain killed Abel. I wasn’t just their friend. I _caused_ Abel’s death, because I lost control. I was angry with God, and I wanted to know if a human could be forgiven if they fell out of God’s grace. I pushed Cain because—because—”

Aziraphale guided Crowley to a bench nearby. He sat, and as he lowered his head into his hands, Crowley felt a different barrier come undone—the guilt, unnamed, unspoken for over six thousand years, flooded out. Crowley gave in to the grief and collapsed against Aziraphale chest, weeping. For a long while they sat, with only the sound of the passing cars to accompany Crowley’s shaky breathing, Aziraphale gently stroking Crowley’s hair.

"I had no idea,” Aziraphale finally said. “I can’t imagine having to keep that secret for all these centuries.”

“I saw it happen, Aziraphale. I guided Cain’s hand to the rock, I was in his head. And then… When he looked up. Angel, the look on his face. He looked just like _me_ , when I fell.” Crowley’s voice began to choke up, like someone had put too many rubber bands around his throat. Several uneven breaths later, he continued. “I experimented on those boys, Aziraphale. I wanted to know if I could be forgiven, so I used those boys as guinea pigs, and it was _pointless_. What if doing this, this _thing_ with kids now turns out the same way? I can’t go through that again.” He shoved himself off of Aziraphale and stood up, leaning an arm on the lamppost and resting his head against his forearm.

“I cannot imagine what you’ve had to endure, keeping this secret for six thousand years,” Aziraphale began slowly. Crowley spoke like he barely had the strength to lift the thoughts from his head, but when Aziraphale began, it put him in mind of a skilled bricklayer, carefully choosing each word with love and precision. “And certainly, I can see how you might be afraid to forge another connection with a child. But don’t you see, Crowley? All of that guilt and fear, that was based on the world that the Almighty intended to end with Armageddon. We live in a different world now, where you can make choices based not on what you are or where you come from, but what you want to be and where you want to go. And even if you might not be forgiven in the eyes of Heaven, do you think that would matter to any of these children?”

Aziraphale reached out to Crowley and slipped the top sheet of paper from his notepad into his hand. Crowley looked it over, not speaking. Crammed together in Aziraphale’s angelic handwriting were the names of schools, churches, synagogues, and mosques, LGBTQ youth centers, homeless shelters. A few numbers, some mailing addresses. Several places were highlighted, with notes of how desperate they were for additional hands or mentors for the kids.

“A lot of these organizations, at least the more local ones, are stretched pretty thin. Not enough adults on staff, too few donors, and far, far too many children than they can care for adequately. They have a specific need. You filling that need wouldn’t be selfish, and it wouldn’t be an experiment. It would be _good_.” Aziraphale moved to stand next to Crowley took his hand in his own, no longer worrying about his demon’s dislike of positive adjectives. Crowley needed to hear that he could do good in the world. He needed his name said in the same breath as the word “good.”

Unsurprisingly, Crowley bristled, trying desperately to downplay how badly he wanted Aziraphale to call him a good man again. “And what am I going to do, Aziraphale, teach them maths? No one needs maths! I’m over six thousand years old and I have never needed maths.”

Aziraphale looked up. Before the Not-Apocalypse, Pollution would have seen to it that the lights of the city drowned out any starlight; now, though the sky was somewhat cloudy, a few stars shone through the holes in the celestial canopy. They twinkled merrily, and Aziraphale smiled at them, twinkling right back. Crowley looked on, moved by the sight of his daft, old angel, who had stared down utter annihilation, seen his superiors trash everything he held dear, and still was able to find beauty in the Almighty’s handiwork. Even with the clouds, Crowley knew that his angel was gazing at the constellations he had put up, the nebulae he had hung in the sky. Aziraphale looked back to Crowley.

“Crowley,” he said, his voice tender, face beaming. _Here are children who were given nothing, not even a fighting chance_ , his tone said. _You can’t change Cain and Abel, you can’t change your past, but you change so many others’ futures._ “You might not need maths, Crowley, but there are children out there who need it. After all, humans can’t get into space without quite a bit of it.”

“Right then,” Crowley announced. “Tomorrow, you and I are going to find some kids who need help in maths.”

They continued down the street and Crowley slyly slipped his arm around Aziraphale’s, tucking the piece of paper into his opposite pocket.


End file.
